Sales of a variety of goods ranging from automobiles to fine jewelry have been enhanced by displaying the goods on rotary tables. Motion imparted to the tables attracts attention to the goods and allows them to be viewed from all sides. Attention may be attracted both individually and collectively to a number of goods by rotating the individual goods with respect to each other on separate tables of a display.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,769 to Mueller discloses a rotating display stand for foods including a series of shelves that alternately rotate in opposite directions about a vertical axis. Each of the shelves is supported by one of two groups of upstanding rods that carry rollers having slots for receiving annular portions of the shelves. The two groups of rods are rotated in opposite directions by coupling each of the rods to a gear that is driven in series with other gears coupled to adjacent rods. One of the gears in the series is connected to a motor in the base of the display. Rollers carried by the separate groups of rods engage the alternate shelves by friction against an inner portion of the shelves for rotating the shelves in the direction of rotation of rods.
Although Mueller's display stand is appropriate for displaying foods, the vertical stacking of the shelves obscures viewing of the goods from all sides. A variety of goods, especially finely crafted articles, have important features that are not noticeable from a limited angular view. Accordingly, it would be preferable to display collections of such articles by individually mounting the articles on separately rotating tables that do not obscure views of the other tables.
An example of the type of apparatus that could be modified for providing a rotary display of this type is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,063 to Lehwalder. Although Lehwalder's apparatus is actually a game board, a number of game board disks are arranged for a type of motion that is believed to be particularly suitable for displaying articles. A rotatable support plate carries the disks for rotation about respective axes in spaced locations about the plate. Each of the disks is coupled to a planetary gear that meshes with a stationary sun gear centered above the support plate. Angular movement imparted to the support plate transmits a larger angular movement to each of the disks in accordance with the respective tooth numbers of the sun gear and each of the planetary gears.
Nevertheless, Lehwalder's disks are not well supported for carrying articles for display, and the separate gears required to impart motion to the disks make the game board especially expensive and complicated to manufacture for purposes of a similarly sized display. The disks and support plate are mounted on separate bearings that incur frictional losses in addition to frictional losses incurred by the gear meshes that are used to rotate them. Also, Lehwalder does not have any means for automatically rotating the support plate to provide continuous motion to the disks.